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#COVID19 arrived in the UK *last year*. The finding by the Kent coroner raises many hard questions swerved in this @TheSun piece. A short, sad thread https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/12618638/british-dad-coronavirus-christmas-china/
One of the hardest questions for me and for many others is whether #Covid19 killed our loved ones. Here's a blog post I wrote in May about the death of my husband @andygangof4 https://www.catherinemayer.co.uk/post/2020-vision-14-may-16-00
Since I wrote it, many people have been in touch with their own case histories https://www.catherinemayer.co.uk/post/2020-vision-11-june-19-30 Through @CovidJusticeUk I've heard many more stories of people lost to #Covid19-like illness but never tested and so not included in official tolls
Huge sympathy to Jane Buckland who has just learned that #Covid19 was a cause of her father Peter Attwood's death. She is quoted in @TheSun: “Covid has obviously been around for much longer than we know. People have been talking about a cover-up but we don’t know the scale of it"
The article points the finger at China and yes, this is a key question. What was known by whom and when? How differently might this have unfolded if alerts had been sounded earlier and whistleblowing applauded rather than suppressed?
Frankly, this train of thought is unbearable. Because how many lives might have been spared? It is tough enough to mourn @andygangof4 and my stepfather John Bird without wondering if a touch of transparency might have saved them
In @TheSun @MPIainDS also takes a swipe at @WHO. It is "also guilty because they failed to press China back in November and December when it became obvious that China had at least an epidemic on their hands". Again, no argument from me. There are questions to answer here
So many questions and there are so many, too, for the UK government. Yet these are ignored in this report and, crucially, by ministers. This matters not because we who are grieving want someone to blame but BECAUSE WE AIM TO SAVE FURTHER LIVES BY FOSTERING UNDERSTANDING OF #COVID
You cannot make good policy if you ignore the available evidence: the revised timelines, the implied wider prevalence. The @CovidJusticeUk families also have valuable testimony about systemic failings that need urgently to be addressed. Yet @BorisJohnson refuses to meet them
The group is not in legal action against the government. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/sep/01/boris-johnson-backtracks-on-meeting-group-for-covid-19-bereaved
I'll admit it, @BorisJohnson. We *are* scary, we who are grieving. Our emotions are close to the surface. We lack artifice. We have the clarity of grief to know what matters. And what matters is that this government does everything possible to combat #Covid19 and save lives
